


Late Nights and Pizza

by deadinderry



Category: Metallica
Genre: kirk/rob if you SQUINT, now it's outright, okay maybe not that subtle but it's not outright, the best metallica groupings are kirk/any bass player fight me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-23
Updated: 2020-03-05
Packaged: 2020-12-31 14:35:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21147317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deadinderry/pseuds/deadinderry
Summary: He had two hours. Modern day college AU.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> it's rob's birthday! happy birthday rob, i have no clue how to write rob.

Two hours.

He was so fucking dumb, he _knew _that he’d had the paper due, he _knew _that it was long, he _knew _that his outlines were utter shit and mostly meant he had to write and organize the entire thing still, and he _knew _that the library was closing early so that they could shampoo the carpets. “Can’t I just—I’ll hide out, man, you won’t even know I’m here,” Kirk tried, clutching at his laptop bag. “I gotta finish this and my roommate’s got his friends over, and they’re distracting.”

Kirk did like his roommate, and he did like his roommate’s friends, and if he didn’t have this paper due he would be smoking weed with Cliff and Scott and Charlie, but he was going to fail Shakespeare and he _needed _that class.

The dude who worked at the front desk of the library was pretty unsympathetic. “Sorry,” he said. “Library’s closing in fifteen minutes.”

“Can I at least go and print something?” Kirk asked. It was a pretty weak excuse to try and sneak into some back room, but the good thing about work study students is that most of the time they really didn’t give a shit, so the guy shrugged and waved him back, and Kirk headed back toward the computers. He made it about ten steps before someone grabbed his arm and he jumped.

“Sorry,” a voice said, and he turned.

He knew this guy. Rob Trujillo—probably about the same height as Kirk but solid. Long hair, snapback hat. “It’s fine,” Kirk said. “Do you work here?”

“Yeah,” Rob said. “You’re Kirk, right? You’re in one of my classes.”

Kirk nodded. They had a general together. “Yeah, American National Government,” he said. “Rob?”

“Yeah,” Rob said.

“Can you sneak me in here someplace to work on this? It’s due in two hours and Cliff is smoking weed with Scott and Charlie in our room and if I go back there I will also be smoking weed with Scott and Charlie in our room and then I’ll fail Shakespeare.”

Rob laughed. “Yeah, sure,” he said. “C’mon, we can head down into the archives. No carpet to shampoo down there.”

Rob led him down a creepy back staircase into a creepier room that went on _forever_. Seriously, it was like—it was fucking creepy, and Kirk was kind of living for it. There were shelves that went on forever, dust making clouds with every step they took. Rob led him through to a desk at the back. “Voila,” he said. “And there’s even pretty good internet down here, since this is where the library’s router is.”

“Cool,” Kirk said. The desk looked like it was going to snap as soon as he set anything down on it and the chair looked about the same. It was great. He glanced at Rob and grinned. “Cool. Hey, what’s your major?”

“Undecided,” Rob said. Kirk started setting up. “You?”

“Uh, English and psychology,” Kirk said. “But my roommate does music and he seems to like it, like, a lot, so I might switch.”

“You play anything?”

Kirk was starting to get the feeling that hanging out with Rob Trujillo was going to be just as distracting as hanging out with Cliff, except for with less weed, probably. “Yeah, guitar,” Kirk said. “Cliff does bass—”

“Oh, shit,” Rob said. “Your roommate’s Cliff Burton? He’s fucking great.”

“I know,” Kirk said. Cliff Burton was fucking great. Everyone who knew him knew that Cliff Burton was fucking great. Even assholes thought Cliff Burton was fucking great. Because he was fucking great. “But also, like, distracting.”

“Right, yeah, you gotta do a paper,” Rob said. He ducked his head, a little and grinned. “Uh, I gotta do some shit around here. I’ll check on you when I’m done so that you don’t like, get locked in here.”

Kirk nodded, even though privately he thought that would be kind of cool, and got to work. At eleven-forty-five he realized that he was not going to get this shit done and uploaded in time, so he e-mailed the professor and tried to beg an extension. The guy was normally pretty chill about that sort of thing, especially since he was only looking for like, a two-hour extension, and at one-thirty in the morning, he e-mailed it, slammed his laptop shut, and slammed his head against the desk.

“Get it done?”

Kirk jumped.

“Fuck,” he muttered. “Yeah. It’s shitty.”

He turned to look, and Rob was holding pizza.

“Where did you get that?” he asked.

“Snuck back to my dorm to cook it quick,” Rob said. Kirk moved his laptop and Rob dropped the pizza on the desk. “Scoot.”

Kirk scooted over, even though he privately thought that the chair was one hundred per cent going to snap under their combined weight, and Rob squished next to him. They didn’t like, really fit, because Rob had pretty broad shoulders, but he put an arm around the back of the chair and Kirk ended up pretty nestled into him, which wasn’t too terrible, because he was tired and Rob smelled like pizza and it was—it was all right.

“So you did lock me in here,” Kirk said.

“I was going to ask you if you wanted to take a break for the pizza but you looked busy,” Rob said, shrugging. Then he pulled a couple of cans of beer out of his cargo shorts and handed one over.

“Thanks,” Kirk said. “You’re the fucking greatest also, I’m realizing.”

“It’s because I play bass,” Rob said.

Kirk cracked a smile. “Right,” he said.

“Eat some, though,” Rob said. Kirk nodded and took a piece. It was cheese. He didn’t realize how fucking starving he was until he took a bite, and then he promptly bolted down three pieces in the time it took Rob to eat one. “Jesus Christ.”

“Sorry,” Kirk said, wiping off his mouth with the back of his hand. “I skipped supper to work on this shit.” He cracked the beer and took a drink. It was warm but beer was beer. “I got another one due on Tuesday. Think I can break in again?”

“Shit, dude, it’s a date,” Rob said. Kirk turned a little red, and Rob bumped his head against Kirk’s for a second. “You bring the beer next time.”


	2. Late Nights and More Pizza

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You know, the library closes in like, ten minutes.”
> 
> “I also know a guy with a key.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> welcome to this completely unplanned sequel

“So, when’s this one due?”

“Okay, shut up,” Kirk said. “I had other stuff to do, and this one’s worth hardly any points, so that’s why I didn’t work on it until now.”

Rob grinned and shook his head. “You know, the library closes in like, ten minutes.”

“I also know a guy with a key.”

* * *

So this paper’s pretty short, it’s just due at his eight A.M. the next morning, and Kirk maybe wanted to see if Rob would let him into that super kickass cool creepy basement again. And you know—Rob lead him down the creepy stairs and into the creepy back desk in the creepy basement and Kirk was _living _for this, again.

“It’s not gonna take me long,” Kirk said. “I promise.”

“Okay,” Rob said. “I’ll be right back, all right?”

“Gotta lock up?”

“Yeah,” Rob said. He grinned, a little. “And you need a pizza, huh?”

“Well—” Kirk said. “I thought I was supposed to pay the next time?”

“Well, maybe I’m nice,” Rob said. “Be right back.”

Kirk watched him go and then focused in on his paper. It took him about half an hour—it was a short one. Very short, just a couple pages, double-spaced, and he could get that done fast. That was what you learned as an English major—fast paper-writing. By the time Rob was back, Kirk was digging around in the archives.

“Having fun?”

Kirk jumped—he’d had a pile papers that he was sifting through, keeping an eye out for spiders, and he’d honestly kind of forgotten about Rob. “Yes,” he said, dropping the papers. “You have one hundred per cent access to this _all the time_?”

“It’s mostly boring and weird shit,” Rob said. “But yes.”

“Man, any old stack of papers that looks like it could summon the devil is cool,” Kirk said. Rob grinned and dropped a no-longer-frozen pizza and a couple cans of beer on the desk. “Thanks for supper, again.”

“Yeah, you owe me,” Rob said. “Maybe you can proof a paper for me, or something.”

“Yeah, definitely,” Kirk said. They ate pretty fast; Kirk had, again, skipped supper. This was less because of ‘working on stuff’ and more because ‘Cliff wanted to jam, and when Cliff wants to jam, you take that gift’, but either way, he was fucking starving. He bolted down about half the pizza and then leaned back. “Thanks.”

“Yeah, you said that,” Rob said. He grinned, a little. “It’s no problem dude, seriously, I steal them from my roommate.”

Kirk actually burst out laughing at that. “Really?”

“Yeah,” Rob said. “He’s never around, so I just help myself to all of his frozen food. It works out well.”

Kirk shook his head. “You are an awful roommate.”

“Nah,” Rob said. He stretched and hopped to his feet. “C’mon. Lemme actually show you around this place.”

So they stumbled around in the semi-darkness; the only real light was directly over the desk, so Rob had to use his phone flashlight for a while. He swept the thin beam over tracks in the dust, over cobwebs—overall, it made Kirk feel like he was in a horror movie, which he was a definite fan of.

They stopped when they hit a door.

“What’s through there?”

“You think it’s something cool,” Rob said. “But it’s just another staircase up into the library. Probably the one we should take since it puts us outside.”

“Oh,” Kirk said. Suddenly aware of how close they were; they’d been edging closer and closer to each other during the entire walk, and now his mouth was dry. Heat radiated off Rob like he was a fucking space heater/ “Oh.”

“What’s on your mind?”

This guy could like, read fucking _minds _or something.

“You’re like a space heater,” Kirk said.

Rob snorted, a little. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Kirk said. Rob took another step toward him and rested his elbows on Kirk’s shoulders. Very warm.

“Huh?”

Oh, he’d said that out loud.

Kirk cleared his throat. “You’re—very warm.”

“Uh-huh,” Rob said. Kirk could hardly see him at this point; the flashlight/phone was in one of his hands, and thus pointed at the floor behind him. All shadows and heat and kissing him. Kirk made a weird little noise in the back of his throat and then kissed him back.

When Rob broke it, he said: “So you kiss on the second date, huh?”


End file.
